From the Washington Post:

Was there a ‘Ferguson effect’ in Baltimore? Don’t be so sure.

By Radley Balko
July 19

The Watch Opinion

… It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the people making this argument [that there is a Ferguson Effect] are sacrificing lives to gain political points.

This is a few thousand words of obfuscation to distract from the fundamental fact (which goes unmentioned in the article) that the total number of homicides nationally in 2016 was 20% higher than in 2014, when BLM launched during the Ferguson rioting in August 2014. Moreover, many of the worst spikes in murders, such as St. Louis, Baltimore, and Chicago, happened directly following BLM’s biggest victories.

That’s so many incremental dead bodies that I would be similarly tempted to try to confuse the issue and accuse my critics of “sacrificing lives,” too.

Let me make a constructive suggestion for Mr. Balko, a leading advocate for less violent policing. We all have an interest in better policing, and that requires constant attention, training, and calling out of bad behavior by the police. But … tying what ought to be a standard Good Government movement, similar to, say, airliner safety promotion, to the War on Racism, as happened during this Late Obama Age Collapse, was disastrous for all concerned (other than for a few professional racial hate activists).

[Comment at Unz.com]